Already frenzied, Star Wars mania kicks into hyperdrive next week as the trailer for "Episode One: The Phantom Menace" of the classic movie series debuts. And with thousands of sites devoted to the six-months-distant film, the Web is at the epicenter of the hype.
The most recent wave of excitement began Tuesday, as the first promotional poster for the new movie was released on the official Star Wars site and was quickly picked up by fan sites.
"When I saw that poster, my brain almost fell out of my head," said York travel executive Alex Roy, summing up the sentiment flying through the ether.
But all is not peaceful in the galaxy. In a community that has been waiting 15 years for its next cinematic dose, nerves are a little tight. This is especially the case among the bigger fan sites like TheForce.net, Jedi Net, and Ain't It Cool News -- which have been in a tacit competition to leak unauthorized Episode One tidbits.
"There's lots of infighting among the fan sites," said Carl Cunningham, who runs "Prequel Watch" for Jedi Net. Like other sites of its kind, Jedi Net features news, designs, and rumors often smuggled from the set of the new Star Wars film, as well as information on collectibles and marketing tie-ins -- from action figures to Pepsi cans to comic books.
"There's a fair amount of flame mail," Cunningham said. "When we posted prototype action figures, TheForce.net posted them the next day with their watermarks on them, and no accreditation to us."
But the inter-site scraping is mild compared to the fights between fans over the almost Talmudic interpretations of Web-liberated Star Wars information.
Analyzing the new promotional poster, one Ain't It Cool News visitor, Robert Knecht Schmidt, wrote, "I now challenge you to detect a flaw.... Look at Anakin's shadow. Now remember what planet he's on. Now how many suns that planet has. Now how many shadows two light sources cast."
Anakin Skywalker is the young, still-innocent Darth Vader, and his planet, Tatooine, has two suns. The poster shows only one shadow.
To which another visitor, Richard Barrett, thundered, "What a bunch of spoiled, cynical brats we've all become. The poster for ... the movie we've all been waiting for for years is finally out, and all we can do is tear it apart.... Can somebody please tell me how you might all actually be satisfied?"
Despite such weighty debate over picayune matters, all the major fan sites reported frequent visits from Lucasfilm, the company that created and marketed the movies. The company also has an official Star Wars Web site -- a sleek, corporate promotional space, that carefully stokes the flames of fan interest. The trailer appears in theaters nationwide starting on Friday.
Like the movie itself, the allure of the Star Wars sites appeals to a specific demographic. "It's extremely generational. The vast majority of our visitors are 30 and under," said Paul Ens, a senior editor at TheForce.net. His site receives about 12,000 visitors a day.
Ens, 27, is a self-employed computer programmer in Saskatchewan, Canada, where he lives with his wife and 5-month-old son. He runs local church youth groups, and puts in two to three hours per day on the site -- down from five since his son was born. Ens estimates he has seen the original Star Wars more than 300 times, and each of the sequels more than 200.
Like many hardcore Star Wars fans, Ens is nervous about the actual film matching expectations after the decade-and-a-half buildup.
"What if this movie really sucks? That's what my friends keep asking. I don't really know."
But until the film debuts, Ens is trying to keep tension among the Star Wars at a low simmer.
"Sci-fi fans tend to be very detail-driven. It's a way to keep the excitement going. But Star Wars isn't about details, it's about the characters," Ens said. "The adventure. The fantasy."
